Refuse to be labeled

July 2, 1986

THE little girl had been playing ball with a doting uncle. Finishing the game, she ran to her mother and announced happily that her uncle had said she was definitely going to be ``the athletic type.'' The mother had been finding release from parental anxieties about her young children by daily affirming in prayer that God is the one Father-Mother. As she pondered the uncle's statement, she recalled the Bible teaching that God has created man in His likeness. God, as the one creator, saw all as the manifestation of Himself and saw all to be good.1 How could God's good or His man be restricted by a particular human categorization--either flattering or disparaging? Man reflects God, not partially but in God's fullness and perfection.

A few years later the daughter complained about her inability to do well in her algebra class, though she had fine marks in all her other classes. She said, ``I was told I would have a hard time in algebra because I get good marks in English, and when you are good in English, you aren't good in math.'' Her mother reminded her that she always had with her the qualities of God for the meeting of every demand; that she included those qualities as God's likeness. Grasping the practical meaning of this spiritual truth, the daughter found that she was able to do the work.

One day when she was completing her junior year in high school, she had a scheduled appointment with a guidance director who was to help her in her choice of a college and future courses. When she returned home, recalling the former experiences, she laughingly reported: ``He said he couldn't type me. I can do whatever I want to do--the choice is mine.''

Then, toward the end of her freshman year in college, she called home and said, ``I've just come from a conference about my choice of a major and--guess what? --I was told I couldn't be typed so I should just make any decision I felt led to make.'' She later completed graduate studies in a subject that she felt had the broadest spectrum and gave her the greatest opportunities in a college teaching career.

Paul said that there is ``one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.'' He explained that God has given grace to all and that we demonstrate it in individual ways, ``till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.''2 The perfect man, the likeness of God, is our real being.

Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes, ``Man and woman as coexistent and eternal with God forever reflect, in glorified quality, the infinite Father-Mother God.''3

We will not be judged so much as a particular type of mortal, or be limited by mortal judgments, if we will first honor God as the origin of the good that is truly our heritage as His offspring. Then we will be protected, to an increasing degree, from the impositions attached to gender, age, ethnic background. If we're faithful in claiming and expressing the good that is God, we won't be limited by people or places, by an imbalance between supply and demand. We won't be quickly labeled--stamped for a dead-end destination, harshly branded for life.

The one supreme and infinite Being is God. He is Spirit, and that which exists to express Him must be spiritual and unlimited. This understanding doesn't wipe out our individuality but heightens it, showing us the true source and nature of individuality as an expression of the infinite God.

We are inseparable from the source of all good. God is the infinite, perfect Principle, or cause; and man individually, as His likeness, reflects the unbounded nature of that perfect divine cause.